Adidas’ latest fashion foray is purely digital

Since the drop of Adidas’ first NFT collection in December 2021 (which sold out faster than tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour), the sportswear brand has been busy building out its “community-based, member-first, open metaverse strategy.”

Holders of the original 30,000 “Into the Metaverse” tokens were able to swap them out for exclusive physical items earlier this year, and those that did so then received additional tokens from the brand—Adidas Originals Meta Capsule NFTs.

In November, token holders gained access to yet more exclusive Adidas fashion: a 16-piece collection of blockchain-based virtual wearables for the metaverse ranging from the almost plausible to the utterly fantastical (take a look at the jackets themselves and you’ll know what we mean!)

• Existing NFT holders were allocated items at random, and can choose to “burn” the token and reveal the item, which can then be worn by a virtual avatar, or sell the NFT without knowing which item it represents.
• Those who don’t already own an Adidas NFT can still purchase the virtual wearables on digital marketplace OpenSea, where items are on sale for as much as 88 Ethereum (over $100,000).
• The collection includes three limited-edition wearables representing Adidas’ early partners in its Web3 foray: NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, collector Gmoney, and comic series Punks Comics.

Fashion without bounds: The virtual wearables both nod to iconic aspects of the Adidas brand, and feature “disruptive designs” for metaverse worlds, the company said.

• In 2021, Adidas bought 144 pieces of land in Web3 metaverse The Sandbox, but the brand says its new wearables are ready to be used in “all frontiers of Web3.”
• Adidas certainly isn’t alone in its pursuit of virtual fashion: In November, competitor Nike launched the beta version of its own platform to enable collecting and trading digital products like jerseys and shoes.

“Web3 offers our designers and collaborators a new outlet to imagine, and reimagine, how our brand can be represented in augmented and virtual worlds,” said Nic Galway, senior VP of creative cirection for Adidas Originals. “Creatively, we’re extremely proud to say that this virtual collection represents more than just a historic first for Adidas, It also represents an idea of wearable clothing that can transcend time and space, a community that is vividly diverse, and a level of utility that can be explored and even discovered as worlds and avatars take new forms.”—MA